Network Working Group                                        M. Mealling
Request for Comments: 3622                                VeriSign, Inc.
Category: Informational                                    February 2004


             A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for
                    the Liberty Alliance Project

Status of this Memo

  This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
  not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
  memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

  This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace that
  will identify various objects within the Liberty Architecture for
  federated network identity.

1.  Introduction

  The Liberty Architecture seeks to provide federated network identity
  in such a way that enhances security, privacy and trust; thus
  creating a networked world across which individuals and businesses
  can engage in virtually any transaction without compromising the
  privacy and security of vital identity information.

  One fundamental component of this architecture is its use of XML [5],
  and specifically, XML Schema [7] and Namespaces [6].  These
  components require identifiers that will live far beyond the lifetime
  of the organization that produced them.  As such, a URN namespace for
  those components that adheres to the assumptions and policies of the
  Liberty specification is required.

  This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.











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2.  Specification Template

  Namespace ID:

     "liberty" requested.

  Registration Information:

     Registration Version Number: 1

     Registration Date: 2003-04-01

  Declared registrant of the namespace:

     Liberty Alliance Project

     c/o IEEE-ISTO

     445 Hoes Lane

     Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331, USA

     [email protected]

  Declaration of structure:

     The Namespace Specific Strings (NSS) of all URNs assigned by
     Liberty will conform to the syntax defined in section 2.2 of RFC
     2141 [1].  In addition, all Liberty URN NSSs will consist of a
     left-to-right series of tokens delimited by colons.  The left-to-
     right sequence of colon-delimited tokens corresponds to descending
     nodes in a tree.  To the right of the lowest naming authority node
     there may be zero, one or more levels of hierarchical (although
     not in the RFC 2396 [2] sense of 'hierarchy') naming nodes
     terminating in a rightmost leaf node.  See the section entitled
     "Identifier assignment" below for more on the semantics of NSSs.
     This syntax convention is captured in the following normative ABNF
     [4] rules for Liberty NSSs:

     Liberty-NSS        =   1*(subStChar) 0*(":" 1*(subStChar))
     subStChar       =   trans / "%" HEXDIG HEXDIG
     trans           =   ALPHA / DIGIT / other / reserved
     other           =   "(" / ")" / "+" / "," / "-" / "." /
                         "=" / "@" / ";" / "$" /
                         "_" / "!" / "*" / "'"
     reserved        =   "%" / "/" / "?" / "#"





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     The exclusion of the colon from the list of "other" characters
     means that the colon can only occur as a delimiter between string
     tokens.  Note that this ABNF rule set guarantees that any valid
     Liberty NSS is also a valid RFC 2141 NSS.

     For example:

        urn:liberty:schemas:authctx:2002:05
        urn:liberty:schemas:core:2002:12

  Relevant ancillary documentation:

     Liberty Architecture Overview [3]

     Version 1.1

     Liberty Alliance Project

     January 15, 2003

  Identifier uniqueness considerations:

     Identifiers are assigned by the Liberty Project within its various
     standards.  In the process of publishing a specification all newly
     minted names are checked against the record of previously assigned
     names.

  Identifier persistence considerations:

     The assignment process guarantees that names are not reassigned
     and that the binding between the name and its resource is
     permanent, regardless of any standards or organizational changes.

  Process of identifier assignment:

     Names are assigned by the Liberty standards publication process.

  Process of identifier resolution:

     At this time no resolution mechanism is specified.

  Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

     Lexical equivalence of two Liberty namespace specific strings
     (NSSs) is defined as an exact, case-sensitive string match.  The
     Liberty Alliance will assign names of immediately subordinate





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     naming authorities in a case-insensitive fashion, so that there
     will not be two Liberty-subordinate naming authorities whose names
     differ only in case.

  Conformance with URN Syntax:

     There are no additional characters reserved.

  Validation mechanism:

     None other than verifying with the correct Liberty specifications.

  Scope:

     Global

3.  IANA Considerations

  This document includes a URN Namespace registration that has been
  entered into the IANA registry for URN NIDs.

4.  Community Considerations

  While there is no resolution mechanism for this namespace, the names
  themselves are used in public implementations of the Liberty
  specifications.  There are circumstances where objects from the
  Liberty system will become exposed to the general Internet.  In these
  cases, the use of the Liberty namespace will provide general
  interoperability benefits to the Internet at large.  Additionally,
  there may be subcomponents of the Liberty specifications that may be
  adopted by other standards, in which case the URNs used to identify
  those components and specifications can be easily used to enhance
  other, non-Liberty based, systems.

5.  Security Considerations

  Since there is no defined resolution mechanism for Liberty URNs it is
  difficult to authenticate the fact that a given namespace actually
  adheres to the standard, thus applications should be careful to not
  take some unverified sources assertion that what it is sending
  adheres to what the actual URN is assigned to.










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6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

  [1]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

  [2]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource
       Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998.

  [3]  Hodges, J. and T. Watson, "Liberty Architecture Overview",
       Liberty 1.1, January 2003,
       <http://www.projectliberty.org/specs/liberty-architecture-
       overview-v1.1.pdf>.

6.2.  Informative References

  [4]  Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
       Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.

  [5]  Bray, T., Paoli, J., Sperberg-McQueen, C. and E. Maler,
       "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (2nd ed)", W3C REC-xml,
       October 2000, <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>.

  [6]  Bray, T., Hollander, D. and A. Layman, "Namespaces in XML", W3C
       REC-xml-names, January 1999, <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-
       names>.

  [7]  Thompson, H., Beech, D., Maloney, M. and N. Mendelsohn, "XML
       Schema Part 1: Structures", W3C REC-xmlschema-1, May 2001,
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/>.

7.  Intellectual Property Statement

  The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
  intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to
  pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
  this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
  might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it
  has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the
  IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and
  standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of
  claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of
  licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to
  obtain a general license or permission for the use of such
  proprietary rights by implementors or users of this specification can
  be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.





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  The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
  copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
  rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice
  this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive
  Director.

8.  Author's Address

  Michael Mealling
  VeriSign, Inc.
  21345 Ridgetop Circle
  Dulles, VA  20166
  USA

  Phone: +1 678 581 9656
  EMail: [email protected]
  URI:   http://www.verisignlabs.com


































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9.  Full Copyright Statement

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

  This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
  others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
  or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
  and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
  kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
  included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
  document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
  the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
  Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
  developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
  copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
  followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
  English.

  The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
  revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assignees.

  This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
  "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
  TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
  BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
  HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
  MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Acknowledgement

  Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
  Internet Society.



















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